Measles Outbreak Blamed on Vaccine Truthers Causing Irrational Epidemic. Health Crisis Inevitable.

[evildevil]

Freedumb: Let the Ignorant Masses Decide How Are We Going to Get Infected and Die.

Measles outbreak! Vaccine trutherism now officially a public health crisis
It's never been more important to take the infectious disease seriously

It’s back. Three years after public health officials realized that they had been preemptive in declaring that measles

Comments

[lied_ohne_worte]

I can only say what I always say in these posts: My parents and all their siblings had measles. One of my aunts was delirious from fever, and my mother describes it as very scary; I think they've already beaten the odds by all six of them making it through without brain damage.

We had a teacher at school who had had polio, which means he had been walking with a severe limp ever since it happened - and he was one of the lucky ones.

And my mother (her sisters perhaps too) had tuberculosis as a child, because that's what you got after the war when you needed the nutrition in milk and couldn't always afford the luxury of buying milk from those farmers whose cows were assumed to be clean.

In our household there wasn't even any discussion about whether I would be vaccinated. There's no need for anyone nowadays to get any of these illnesses, but I suspect it would be better for pedagogical reasons if the ideological vaccination deniers (ours here come from a different ideology than the US ones, but the results are similar if not as widespread) could see someone with damage resulting from "childhood illnesses" now and then.

[skittish_derby]

I am quite sure that the 'out of sight' aspect to polio and measles and other preventable illnesses contributed a LOT to the anti-vaxers momentum. If they lived it, and saw people die from it, they probably wouldn't have second thoughts about keeping their children and other people safe.

[nesmith]

I think that's a huge point for sure; it's because these assholes haven't seen someone in an iron lung or limping or being scarred from these illnesses that they have the luxury of pretending "oh they can't be that bad" and focusing instead on the possible and infrequent issues that sometimes come up with vaccines.

Although frankly I think some of these people are so delusional that even seeing it wouldn't make a difference. They won't let pesky things like facts interrupt their beliefs.

[the_siobhan]

I've been wondering about that lately. Given recent articles about what strategies are best for convincing an anti-vaxxer (short answer: none of them) I would like to see some data from interviews with the parents of kids who have contracted the disease to see if even that has convinced them.